Sunday, 20 December 2015

It
isn’t Christmas without gingerbread and, much as I always love classic
gingerbread men...

...
I wanted to make something different to anything I’d made before. I found
this shop on Etsy
selling cutters to make the cutest little gingerbread houses and I fell in
love! (Etsy is an incredible site; I
know it gets some stick for some of the weird stuff you can find on it but I
challenge anyone to spend 20 minutes or so browsing the site without finding
something they want!)

The
houses are a bit of work but can be made in stages, as gingerbread keeps very
well for days and days in an airtight tin. I always prefer piping on a
flat surface so decorate all the panels and let the icing set, before
assembling the houses. As these are small they don’t require much icing
to hold them together.

To
provide a bit of scale, here’s a house next to my favourite mug (I dread to
think how many cups of tea this cup has held!):

I’m
not much of a decorator and – weak and pathetic as it sounds – get hand cramps
if I do too much piping, so my houses are minimalist, but, if you’re better at
that sort of thing you could really go to town.

The
gingerbread was lovely – it was somewhere between ginger biscuit and the
softer, more cakey, gingerbread. It
puffed up while cooking giving a nice smooth finish and the taste had just
enough fire to it. I don’t think it’s
been a very exciting year for cookery books but this recipe came from one book
that did capture my interest – Gingerbread Wonderland by Mima Sinclair.

This
is likely to be my last post before Christmas so I shall sign off hoping that
you all have a lovely day – doing whatever it is you have chosen to do! Happy
Christmas everyone!

Place
the golden syrup, sugar, butter and spices in a saucepan larger than you need
and melt together over a gentle heat stirring all the time until the sugar has
dissolved – you can tell when this has happened by looking at the back of your
spoon: if you can still see tiny grains it needs a bit longer.

Increase
the heat and bring to the boil (don’t stir during this process).

Remove
the pan from the heat and beat in the bicarbonate of soda – it will froth up,
hence using a larger saucepan.

Stir
only until the bicarbonate of soda is incorporated and put to one side to cool
– about 15 minutes should be enough.

Fold
the flour and salt into the cooled mixture.

Beat
in the egg – take care not to overbeat the mixture; as soon as the egg is
incorporated stop mixing.

Tip
the dough out onto a work surface or – and this is my preference – a sheet of
non stick foil.

Knead
until it is smooth. Initially the dough will be very sticky and it will be
tempting to add flour but DON’T! This will make the biscuit tough.

Cut
the dough in half and shape into fat discs before wrapping separately in
clingfilm and refrigerating for 1 hour.

Preheat
the oven to 160C/fan oven 140C/325F/gas mark 3.

Roll
the chilled dough out between two sheets of clingfilm and use the cutters of
your choice.

Place
on a baking sheet lined with either baking paper or non stick foil.

Bake
for about 6-7 minutes, if making a small biscuit, or until just starting to
feel firm to the touch. It will puff up
during cooking and if it feels almost marshmallow soft, it needs a couple of
minutes longer.

Leave
to cool for at least 10 minutes on the baking sheet before moving to a wire
rack to cool completely.

Sunday, 13 December 2015

As
much as I love daydreaming about having a Nigella-style existence where I can
spend days in my perfect kitchen crafting masterpieces the reality is that, if you
work full time, and factor in all the other stuff you have to do, time is
short – particularly at Christmas. I am planning on some projects for
Christmas that will be more involved but, for now, I wanted something cute and
quick.

I
have always loved the look of a traditional Christmas pudding but hate the
taste. Therefore, the concept of these little puds was to achieve the
look I covet but made from chocolate chip cupcakes, with the inclusion of
almond to ensure that they will keep well for a few days for entertaining over
the festive period. I decorated them with sugar holly leaves but you can
let your imagination run wild.

In
all honesty, they don’t look like puddings.
There, I’ve said it. The design
in my head didn’t quite manifest itself in the finished item. Mostly because I went overboard with the
ganache – I put on an amount that created the pudding effect, but then had lots
left so was faced with the dilemma of not using it all, or adding too much to the
cakes. As Thom Yorke (never) sang:
gluttony always wins.

The
ganache firmed up a lot quicker than I expected – often ganache can be runny
and you have to refrigerate it, but not this one. It is extremely rich and sweet…but it’s also
Christmas so do not feel any guilt! I read an article stating that the
average person consumes an additional 30,000 calories over the Christmas
period. I’m not sure whether I was meant to take that as a target to aim
towards, like the 10,000 steps a day goal, but……

Grease 1 cupcake trays i.e. 12 holes. You don’t want paper cases as this
will stop the cupcakes having a smooth pudding like finish.

Melt
the butter for the sponges and put to one side to cool.

In
a jug whisk together the yoghurt, eggs and vanilla.

Place
all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl i.e. the sugar, flour, cocoa
powder, ground almonds and chocolate chips.

Pour
the yoghurt mix and the melted cooled butter into the dry ingredients and fold
together just enough to combine.

Spoon
into the greased cupcake pans and bake for 15-18 minutes or until a skewer
inserted into the sponges comes out clean.

Turn
the cakes (inverted – so that the domed top is now the bottom) out onto a wire
rack straightaway – I find this helps flatten the domed top as the sponges
cool.

Leave
to cool completely.

Now
make the ganache: melt the cream and chocolate together. There are
various ways you can do this – short bursts in the microwave and stirring
between each one; melting in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure
the bowl doesn’t touch the water; or my preferred method: in a saucepan using a
gas diffuser ring.

Leave
the ganache to cool and set a little. It might require refrigeration (mine
didn’t) to set up enough to spoon over the cakes but don’t forget about it as
you want it to stay a bit runny.

Sunday, 6 December 2015

If
I were to say to Mr CC I was making a carrot cake his response would be
favourable. However, when I made courgette cakes
he prejudged them negatively even though he ended up eating them and liking
them. The Brussel sprout cake
was admittedly ‘interesting’ (interesting in this context = bleughhhhhh! Don’t
say I didn’t warn you!) but I made that before I met him so, other than hearing
scare stories from survivors, he escaped it unscathed.

Parsnips
are basically carrots that have used higher SPF sunscreen (this view might not
stand up to biological scrutiny) so I was torn whether to ‘fess up to their
inclusion in this cake prior to serving it. I decided not to and instead
turned it into a game of ‘this cake has an unusual ingredient – can you guess
what it is?’He didn’t.

Parsnips,
like carrots, have a natural sweetness but, unlike carrots, have an earthiness
that added to the depth of flavour in the cake. I’m not sure my palate
would’ve detected that it wasn’t carrot but, once you know, the taste is subtly
different. The sponge was light and soft
with tiny flecks of creamy coloured parsnip visible. It was a lovely
combination with the ginger.

I
attended the BBC Good Food show at the NEC last week and bought a bottle of
ginger juice.I used some in the
buttercream; ending up with 2 tablespoons of ginger juice and 2 of syrup from
the jar of stem ginger.It added an
extra bit of zing and heat – I do like my ginger to leave a lasting impression
on my tongue!

I
have never said, thought and written the word ‘parsnip’ as much as I have
whilst baking this cake.When you think
about it, it’s a pretty odd word...and gets sillier the more you say it.Parsnip.Paaaaarsniiiipppp.It’s a funny
word – and I like it!

Sunday, 22 November 2015

Today
is my birthday but, as I’ve been really busy the last few days (lunches,
cocktails, even the opera daaaaaaahling), I find myself in the position of
having precisely zero birthday cakes. I know!!! I will rectify this shameful situation
when I have time (an interesting ginger concoction has caught my eye) but for
now all I really fancied was a steamed sponge pudding.

Whenever
I post a steamed sponge I get requests for a step by step in pictures. My
method is considered old fashioned now, in that I place a steamer above a pan
of simmering water; the modern method seems to be to place an upturned bowl or
saucer in the bottom of the pan containing the water to elevate the
pudding. This is not the way I do it but, if you’re interested, the BBC
Goodfood website has two tutorials:

I have metal pudding bowls with clip on lids.
I bought them from Amazon almost 10 years ago and find them so much less faff
than glass pyrex dishes where you have to make a pleated lid out of baking
paper and foil, and then tie it up with string making a handle at the same
time. I have never been dextrous with knots. The second tutorial
link above covers the paper and string method. (NB. Amazon don’t seem to stock them anymore but
they do have a different range of lidded pudding basins if you search the site)

Compared to making a sponge mix, spooning it into a
cake tin and baking in the oven for 30 minutes or so steaming could look like a
lot of time and effort but please, please, please give it a try. Firstly,
it’s no more time to prep the pudding for steaming than it is a cake for the
oven, and while the cooking time is a lot longer you don’t really need to do
anything during that time. Nothing that comes out of the oven will ever
match a steamed sponge in terms of lightness. It’s like eating spongey
air.

I grease my pudding bowl and place the jam in the
bottom:

Spoon in the batter:

Clip on the lid.
Place in the steamer, over a pan of simmering water:

Leave for 1.5 – 2 hours. It’s not precise
like a baking time and the pudding won’t suffer for being left to steam longer
than actually needed to cook it so don’t feel pressured by the cooking time or
guess when it’s ready. I always give it two hours.

Turn out and enjoy!

NB. Do not adjust your monitor – I did serve rather
large portions. In my defence it was my birthday and freezing cold; I feel either of these facts alone would excuse me but - together - form a rock solid argument. A pudding this size will
serve 6 people easily....just because I cut it into quarters doesn’t mean you
have to!

Place a large saucepan on the hob and fill 3/4s
with water – test that the steamer basket will not touch the water. Bring
the water to a gentle simmer while you are making the pudding.

Grease, with butter, an 850ml pudding bowl (either
metal, ceramic or heatproof glass). If it has a lid, grease that too.

Spoon the jam into the bottom of the pudding bowl.

Now make the sponge: beat together the butter and
sugar until light and whippy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Stir in the flour.

Beat in enough milk to ensure a light dropping
consistency.

Spoon into the pudding bowl and level the surface.

Clip on the lid or, if your bowl doesn’t have a
lid, cover the bowl with a piece of baking paper and a piece of foil, pleated
across the middle to allow for expansion. If you are using the paper/foil
option tie string around the bowl to keep it in place and then loop the string
over the top to make a handle, which will help you lift the pudding out of the
steamer.

Place the steamer basket over the pan of simmering
water.

Place the pudding bowl in the steamer basket and
place the lid on top to ensure the pudding is enclosed in it’s own personal
sauna!

Leave to steam for anywhere between 1.5-2 hours; I
always leave it for two hours.

The water level may need topping up after the first
hour – it depends on the size of the saucepan. Simply boil a kettle of
water and then lift the steamer basket off of the pan, top up the water lever,
and replace the steamer basket – this will not hurt your pudding at all.

Run a knife around the edge of the pudding and turn out onto a plate.

Serve with custard.

Wrap any left over pudding in foil and enjoy the
next day – it reheats like a dream in either the oven or the microwave.

Sunday, 15 November 2015

This recipe is adapted from the
one in the BBC Good Food 25th birthday edition. As soon as I
saw the combination of florentines and shortbread I was sold! I always
associate florentines with Christmas as that’s the only time of year we ever
used to have them; I don’t know whether they have any particular association
with Christmas but, growing up, I remember they always used to form part of
M&S’s confection/biscuit range. M&S used to make a mixed box i.e.
milk, dark and white chocolate. Tactically I would always eat the milk
first as I was the only one in my family to like white chocolate so I didn’t
have to rush with those!

This is a good recipe to use up
all the odds and ends of nuts a baker always seems to have in their cupboard; I
buy a bag of nuts for a particular recipe and then don’t use them all. I
seem to have endless bags with about 20-30g of nuts left in them – this is
where they get to step into the spotlight!

The cherries and pistachios look
so pretty in amongst the nuts and chocolate. You could make it look
extremely festive by using red and green cherries…although I try not to think
too hard about what they do to turn those poor cherries such a vivid
green. Some questions are best left unanswered.

Line a 20cm square tin with
baking papermaking sure the paper comes up high enough that you can use it to
lift the finished bake up out of the tin.

Use a food processor to blitz
together the butter and sugar.

Add the flour and rice flour and
pulse until it starts to come together – don’t overwork it or your biscuit will
be tough rather than crumbly.

Press into the base of the tin
taking care to distribute the mix evenly.

Prick all over with a fork,
cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (or up to 2 days).

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan
oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Bake the biscuit base for 25
minutes.

While the base is cooking start
work on the topping: place the butter, sugar and flour in a pan large enough to
take all the other topping ingredients and gently melt together stirring all
the time.

When all the sugar crystals have
dissolved add the cream and stir until smooth.

Stir in all the nuts and
cherries.

Stir in the chocolate
chips. If you prefer, you can omit the
chocolate chips and instead melt the chocolate and drizzle over the baked bars.

Spoon the hot nut mixture over
the just-baked base and ensure it is well spread out. Be gentle – a
spatula or the back of a spoon works well.

Return to the oven and bake
until the top is firm but retains a little squidge; this will take anywhere
between 10-20 minutes but it can catch quickly so check every 5 minutes.

Leave to cool, in the tin, on a
wire rack.

Cut into fingers.

If you didn’t add chocolate
chips, decorate by melting 100g chocolate by your preferred method i.e.
microwave or hob, and drizzle over the cold bake. (I like to do this after I’ve
cut the fingers as then the chocolate isn’t disturbed with cutting)

Sunday, 8 November 2015

I’m
such a cliché but the first whiff of winter and I’m cracking open the spice
jars like nobody’s business! I found the recipe for the oat sponge and crumble
topping on a recipe sharing website and decided that it needed an extra
element. Oats, spice and pecans led me to the very easy decision to add
some pear to the mix. Pear is one of my absolute favourite fruits to bake
with.

The
pear is fruity and juicy and stops the sponge being too dry or heavy. The
nutty crumble topping adds texture and richness; the dark sugar seeps into the
cak almost like a sauce. I served the cake at room temperature with a cup
of tea but it would work so well warm with ice cream or custard. You
could even bake it in individual pudding moulds for a fancy dessert (but reduce
the cooking time accordingly).

Adding
fruit to a batter always increases the wetness during baking so it’s worth
draining the tinned fruit and patting it dry with kitchen paper. I think that without the addition of the fruit
the sponge may have been a bit dry; the juice was absorbed by the oats making
an almost fragrant sponge – imagine an oaty bread pudding and you’re pretty
close. Have I mentioned how much I love baking with pears?

I
suspect it won’t be an issue, but the cake keeps really well for several
days. The pear keeps the cake soft, and the nuts in the crumble topping
improve with age (unlike the baker!).

I
took a photo of a slice and went for my obligatory ‘fork shot’. Then I went for another...and another....and
it ended up like this:

NB. The crumbs were left on the plate for
artistic purposes and were polished off the moment I put the camera down! Waste not, want not etc.......

Sunday, 1 November 2015

I’ve
never baked (or indeed seen, or eaten) a chocolate carrot cake before. It
seemed the perfect cake given the increasingly autumnal feel in the air – soft
sponge with chocolate and spice; it would be a good Bonfire Night cake
too. Funny how we associate flavours with seasons/events.

Being
a carrot cake this is a very light sponge. The brown sugar adds a caramel
sweetness which always works well with spice. The cocoa adds a
chocolately depth. The sultanas are entirely optional but, in my world,
always make everything better so I added some! I ‘ummed and aaaaahed’
over whether to make this as a single sponge or to make as a sandwich style
cake. In truth, I think it would work as either, but I was in the mood
for a little cream cheese frosting so whipped up an orange one to compliment
the zest in the cake.

I
like it when bakes evolve like this, with a series of little decisions being
made along the way to create the finished item. This was a very popular
cake and something a little bit different which, 8 years into my blog, feels
increasingly difficult to achieve!

The
flavours of this cake work well together but all remain identifiable because
they hit your palate at different times.
The initial hit is the chocolate sweetness; this is cleaned away by the
sharp cream cheese frosting and you are left with a fruit orange spice
flavour. It comes in three distinct
waves. Once I spotted this I took my
time over each mouthful (unlike me) and ticked the stages of flavour off each
time...this is how I entertain myself!

Mr
CC was very sceptical about this cake initially. When I said to him I was making a chocolate
orange carrot cake he gave me a look which I can only describe as a ‘what you
talking bout Willis?’ look (a reference that you will need to be a certain age to get!) but, when he tasted it, he
really liked it!

Sunday, 18 October 2015

Normally,
when I decide to make a banana cake, I never have time to let the bananas fully
ripen and I’m left with the Herculean labour of trying to mash rock-hard
fruit. Not this time! For once I actually managed to mash the bananas
without breaking my wrist.

What
attracted me to this recipe was the addition of sour cream as it cuts through
the richness of the banana. Often banana cake can be dense and heavy in
texture but, like yoghurt, sour cream produces a lovely moist soft sponge. The
thin layer of buttercream added a rich, sweetness which was just enough.

The
smell of the raw cake mix, and while baking was divine – it was so intensely
banana. The addition of the chocolate
chips adds little naughty pockets of sweetness; I used milk chocolate as my
palate always favours sweet over bitter.

Read my novel! Yes! I wrote it!

Look at this great website

Follow my ambitious attempt to find a recipe for a cake, biscuit, pie or tart for every single one of the 39 traditional English counties!

The Caked Crusader and Boy Wonder

Cartoon by Cakeyboi

About Me

So, the answer to the question you’re all asking: who am I? Well, a superhero never reveals their identity. I think it’s stated somewhere in the contract when you sign up for superhero-dom. Let’s just call me THE CAKED CRUSADER. By day (and night if I’m being honest) a mild-mannered City professional, but at weekends I become THE CAKED CRUSADER. Tirelessly fighting anti-cake propaganda and cake-related injustices – for SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, ALWAYS NEEDS CAKE (we’ll just skip over the fact that it’s usually me).

Batman’s got the batmobile, batcave etc. Superman does just great what with being able to fly and being really strong. Spiderman’s got that web thing going on. But I have better than them. For I have a credit card and could get one of these:

The purpose of my blog is simple – to spread the word that CAKE IS GOOD.Yes, it is calorific; that is why it tastes so nice.Yes, too much of it is bad for you; that’s what ‘too much’ means.Yes, we’re all told to eat healthily and we know that we should. But ask yourself this – and look very deeply into your soul before answering – when has a cup of tea and a carrot ever cheered you up? However, put that carrot into a cake and happiness will ensue. Quod erat demonstrandum – CAKE IS GOOD.

This site will catalogue cakes I have unleashed unto the world and my thoughts thereon.

By the way, I will never recommend how many portions you should get out of a cake because we’re all different. Plus, it will be very embarrassing when I say it serves 4 and you get 20 portions out of it.

WARNING: Too much time spent on this blog may cause hunger.

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If so, please let me know and that cake could win a coveted CAFTA award. Email me your suggestions, with a photo of the cake if possible.

About Me

I am a 40-something Chartered Accountant working in the square mile.
My main hobbies at the moment are baking, and setting the world record for the number of cake tins owned by one person.
I spend far too much time watching Spongebob Squarepants and would love to try a Krabby Patty...I know, I know - it's not real.